New Delhi: The Covid-19 pandemic more probably had an unnatural than a natural origin, with potential source being a lab accident or leak, according to new research that utilised a commonly used risk analysis tool.
Originally designed to distinguish between natural epidemics and deliberate biological attacks, researchers modified the Grunow-Finke Tool (mGFT) by tweaking the criteria to determine the likelihood of the nature of the pandemic’s origin.
The mGFT tool, previously applied to smaller outbreaks, contains 11 criteria characterising the pandemic such as intensity and dynamics of the pandemic including its rapid and unusual geographic spread, unusual strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, and peculiarities in clinical symptoms experienced.
The researchers at the University of New South Wales, Australia, assigned points from 1-3 to each critera based on available evidence collected from literature and case data from the public source Our World in Data, that gathers information from the WHO, the John Hopkins University and official government reports.
Factors like biological risk of ongoing bat virus research at Wuhan Institute of Virology, unusual strain and pandemic intensity and dynamics were assigned points of 3, 3, and 2, respectively, while clinical symptoms was assigned 2 points.
Each criteria was multiplied by a weighting factor (1-3) to compute a score. A final score of more than 50 per cent favoured unnatural origins, while less favoured natural origins.
The final score that the mGFT algorithm calculated produced a total of 41 out of 60 points. Being more than 50 per cent, the researchers concluded a higher probability of COVID-19 originating unnaturally, with a focus on lab accidents or leaks as potential sources.
Being used in the context of a pandemic for the first time, the researchers said the tool may require further testing and training.
Also, higher scores tend to be assigned to criteria such as pandemic intensity and unusual rapid spread, that can lead to overall high scores favouring unnatural origins.
To minimise subjectivity in scoring, the team’s results were reviewed by two other experts.
They said the modified GFT provides a risk analysis framework that can be applied to differentiate between natural and unnatural epidemics, and that the tool should be included in the toolset for investigating the pandemic’s origins.
“The strengths of this study include a more comprehensive analysis of factors ranging from traditional virology, epidemiology and medical factors to situational and other intelligence,” the authors wrote in their study.
“The debate about the origins of SARS-COV-2 has been focused largely on medical evidence but not on other intelligence, which is key to identifying unnatural epidemics,” they wrote.
PTI